Possible Fix for the Slow WiFi Problem on Nexus S

If you’re a Nexus S owner annoyed by terribly slow Wi-Fi speeds on the latest version of Gingerbread, there are some things you can do to fix the problem. This is an issue that has been affecting users for a while now, especially those using Android 2.3.4. Here are some possible fixes for the problem.

Ever since I upgraded to Android 2.3.4 on my Nexus S, the Wi-Fi connection was terribly slow; moreover, the connection used to disconnect every now and then. After Googling a while, I realized that I wasn’t the only one with the problem. Here are a couple of quick fixes I came across that worked for me ( I don’t know whether they’ll work for you or not but you can certainly try them out).

1) Change the Wi-Fi encryption to WPA: Initially, my Wi-Fi encryption was set to WEP. I noticed somewhere that Nexus has a few issues connecting with WEP, hence, quickly I changed my router’s encryption to WPA2-PSK [AES]. And voilà, it worked! Earlier I was getting somewhere between 10 kbps-50 kbps; after changing to WPA, the speed increased to 250-500 kbps, which was not as fast as my laptop, but definitely an improvement. Even though the speed has improved, the signal still remains a bit weak.

2) Use the Wi-Fi switch : If you switch between 3G and Wi-Fi a lot, sometimes you may have some problems reestablishing your Wi-Fi connection. In that case, simply disable and re-enable your Wi-Fi connection using the Power Control widget on your home screen. This has worked for many people.

So, those are the 2 solutions that worked very well for me. I expect that the problem will be fixed by Google in the next Android update but till then, you have to keep switching your Wi-Fi on and off. Also, the above solutions might not work for everyone; so, if you have anything that worked for you which I haven’t mentioned above, feel free to let everyone know using the comments section.